Cutbacks and innovation - doing more with less

The vast majority of governments need to reduce their spending. Ours is no exception and this is not going to change. It is a world-wide phenomenon. The challenge is how to do more and more with less and less.

The "more" is about providing/adding more value. The "less" about spending less time, effort, social capital, $....

Cost and value are connected but their relationship can change and can be changed.The present budgetary difficulties represent an opportunity for real innovation. But the key is to understand the links between costs, activity and value. Finding new and better ways to do what needs to be done (activity) can greatly improve the relationship between cost and value.

Build capacity and resilience

• Find the Holy Grail in your situation and ask "Whom does it serve?"  (see the Fisher King)
• ACT on sound theory, principles & heuristics - needed in periods of rapid change and uncertainty
• Work from the present reality - good, bad or indifferent
• ALWAYS start by making things easier - reduces costs; releases resources; enables people to more and better
• FIX the Broken Windows - tackle the common, important issues collaboratively
• LEARN from what happens - do prompt post-mortems and immediately update planning for next time (PDSA)
• be business-like - STOP doing things that don't produce value - 100% cost saving; no change to value
• DON'T ask permission - just DO IT: if it is the right thing to do, you don't need permission
• use focused technology (tools) in new and more productive ways. "Innovation comes from people who are responsible only to themselves."
• develop better working relationships: it is everyone's job to
• know what is happening
• work with others to make sense of, and  improve, what is happening
• make it easier for the next person to do their work well
• reduce waste and rework
• make policies and regulations helpful (make things easier)
• find or create synergies - break down barriers to collaboration
• move from "either-or" (win-lose) thinking to "both-and" (win-win) thinking
• improve processes continuously
• understand the difference between change and improvement
• work towards well understood shared purposes
• understand and manage your levels of response
• provide flexibility to increase responsiveness and initiative
• discover what's already working and support its wider deployment
• focus on solutions (not problems)
• avoid counter measures - get it right the first time - counter measures are waste
• invest in prevention (SWPBS, restorative practices, SEL...
• align and improve activity (purposes, processes, systems) before changing structures
• reduce multitasking - it slows things down!!
• understand and respond according to the phenomena involve
• fix the simple things
• get good advice about the complicated things
• try some safe-fail experiments for complex things
• impose order if there is (genuine) chaos

These kinds of development work best as decision making moves away from traditional command and control, production line and linear systems thinking towards more open and flexible arrangements. It works best as decision makers understand their task is to nurture emergence.

The starting point for such a shift in the thinking of policy/decision makers is to acknowledge that

• under stress, there is a natural urge for management in increase their use of command and control
• while they may be in charge, decision makers are not in control
• they are somewhat removed from the action that is the source of real value
• no-one has the whole story of what is happening
• the staff in the field frequently save an organisation from its own plans and policies (by creating and implementing the necessary workarounds)

The initial steps may be to

• revisit and re-affirm core purposes
• rethink working relationships
• join the dots - understand how and where value is produced, and how value flows, throughout the organisation
• reduce spending as required
• manage for it is ideal
• simplify as much as possible

The implications are that it takes the knowledge and efforts of everyone, working in collaboration, to make the organisation more cost effective. Unilateral decision making by management is unlikely to achieve the best possible outcomes - it is rarely more than tampering. Tampering increases costs and reduces value.